Ah, Philadelphia. City of Brotherly Love, home of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, where Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, where Rocky ran up some steps waving his arms in the air. John Coltrane came from Philly. So do Tastykakes.

I’d never had a burning desire to go to Philadelphia. But I was deep in the midst of a David McCullough reading bender — having recently finished “1776” and being more than halfway through “John Adams” — and was going to be driving right past the city en route from Washington D.C. to our pal Jon’s family lake house in the Adirondacks.

Already on our East Coast vacation, we had seen important sights in D.C., would be staying in Brooklyn close to where Washington’s troops got whooped by the British, and lodging within view of Bunker Hill and the Old North Church in Boston. More

Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. But could that really be true of a hot dog? Is there such a thing as necessity when it comes to a hot dog.

Sit back, friends, and let me tell my tale.

The Sean Dog

It all begins at our local Ralph’s supermarket (Krogers to you folks on the East Coast). I’ve become obsessed with the hunt for their “Woohoo” deals — items throughout the store which, due mostly to rapidly approaching “sell by” dates, have had their prices precipitously cut and have been flagged with a little yellow-and-red “Woohoo!” sticker. It has the same appeal as mushroom hunting or garage sale-ing: sometimes you find something, sometimes you don’t. More often than not, I make staggering discoveries — $14 Italian La Tur cheeses for $4; $20 dry-aged ribeyes for $6. More

Spring is a really good time for food. And several great seasonal items appear around this part of the year.

One of my very favorites is the morel mushroom, which they sometimes (rarely) get at Whole Foods. So driving down the street the other day, rather than shaking my head sadly at all the people mortgaging their futures to shop there when the Whole Foods came into view, I pulled in.

Soft shell crab sandwich

There were no morels.

I continued back to the seafood counter to see if there was anything interesting there. And my eyes nearly escaped their sockets when I realized it was also the time of year of one of my other most favoritest things: soft shell crabs. And on sale, no less!! More

One of my favorite sandwiches ever, the torta Cubana at the Vallarta Mexican grocery store, is a towering affair with ham, beans, bacon, salsa, jalapeños and an egg, all on a soft telera roll. It is delicious, but it is most definitely a Mexican sandwich.

So, in preparing for our recent spring break trip to Havana, I was excited to try the actual Cuban sandwich. According to my research, there would be sandwiches on pretty much every corner. More